I Don’t Know Why

April 8, 2019April 8, 2024Author: Iris M. Bolton

I don’t know why…

I’ll never know why…

I don’t have to know why…

I don’t like it…

I don’t have to like it…

What I do have to do is make a choice about my living.

What I do want to do is to accept it and go on living.

The choice is mine.

I can go on living, valuing every moment in a way I never did before,

Or I can be destroyed by it and in turn, destroy others.

I thought I was immortal, that my children and my family were also,

That tragedy happened only to others…

But I know now that life is tenuous and valuable.

And I choose to go on living, making the most of the time I have,

Valuing my family and friends in a way I never experienced before.

Iris Bolton suffered the loss of her 20-year-old musician son through suicide in 1977 and went on to become a pioneer in the suicide loss survivor movement.

3 thoughts on “I Don’t Know Why”

Shirley McMahan says:

April 27, 2019 at 7:02 pm

This is the cry of my heart as I lay on my bed at night staring at the ceiling, wanting to go to sleep but not able until I’m so exhausted I finally drift off. In the morning as I wake the question “why” is still there. Why didn’t he call someone, he apparently was seeing a therapist because he had med’s on his nightstand. He had talked to me just a few days previously and to one of his brothers also. He had seen his son-in-law who brought him some pool supplies just a day or so before also and they just talked about maintain the pool. When did he decide to take this awful action and why? Just two weeks previous he had taken a trip to see his youngest son & wife who were expecting twins soon and he played with their 2-yr old. He loved his grandkids, taking his step-daughter’s two girls to theme parks and attending all of their school and sport functions. They adored him. He was the family entertainer, always with a joke or prank to make people laugh, while he was hurting inside. And that smile, everyone commented on that wonderful smile. We talked together about so many things, but he didn’t say why. We shared the same interest in politics, religion, and life in general. Didn’t he know that this would hurt us all, and especially me, why? I’m doing what I always do, keeping busy, taking care of my home, seeing friends, going to church, reading, now I am reading about suicide. I knew he hurt physically, he did tell me that, he had the same body hurts that I have, the aging process I thought, sciatic, back pain, arthritis. He never said he was depressed, lonely, thinking of suicide – why?

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Margaret-Dorothy Van Vuuren says:

May 5, 2019 at 5:43 pm

The ‘why’ question also knocks me to the floor. When I see something we looked forward too – I say in my heart “you’re missing this, we could have enjoyed this together – without you the enjoyment is flat and turns to pain.” I find consolation in knowledge obtained from detailed research.

Prof Piet Oosthuizen says in his book Ontsnap van Depressie that people don’t choose to think of suicide, rather it often is a daily struggle. He says imagine yourself as really hungry. Try not to eat. Now try not to think about food and eating. That is how difficult the battle against suicide thoughts sometimes is for people suffering from depression. This piece of information I found consoling. Besides suffering from terrible depression, doing his utmost to manage it, being on the best potpourri of medication his psychiatrist could recommend after years and years of trial and error, he was also battling this urge – and he lost the battle. Also Dr Bessel van der Kolk, in his book The Body keeps the Score explains how trauma affects the way the brain functions. This also was a consolation to me.

These, plus my personal faith in God, are ‘weapons’ I use to battle against the ‘why’. Because my loss is great,
my battles multitude.

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Melinda says:

January 28, 2022 at 10:51 am

The psychiatric “potpourri” is the worst-trial and error, with sensitive brains on a roller coaster ride. My daughter did not want to be poly-pharmed, and suffered with horrific nerve pain. It is very recent that I so deeply mourn her, it is excruciating.

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